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What is Proof of Music Ownership?
scottsk asks: "What is proof of music ownership? I can't find a good answer anywhere. Let's assume some random person is hauled into court allegedly for having music that he has not legitimately bought. What must that person produce to prove the music was purchased legitimately? Is producing an original commercially sold CD with the music acceptable, or is some further proof of purchase needed (cash register receipt, cancelled check, etc.)? What if a person has digitized a commercial cassette, like digitizing a photo? Must the person carry the cassette around forever, or is just the cassette insert sufficient? (What about an LP record that has been digitized?)" Now, what happens if you've lost all of your property in a fire, but still had an off-site digital backup of your legally purchased music somewhere? Does the loss of the original property invalidate the legality of the backups?
Maybe they do a judgement call similar to know if the dog has really eaten the homework?
...is that we really don't own anything.
This is not the greatest
IANAL (but cpt kangarooski is), but it would seem to me that once you purchase a work it is yours. You have made backups for just the reason that happened ... the originals were lost.
If you're talking about the RIAA busting down your door and asking you to prove that you have a legally purchased copy of any of those CD-Rs with "their IP" on them, then I think you can be safe knowing they have to prove that it is more likely than not that those are the result of infringement.
> What is proof of music ownership?
Copyright registration in your name.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Honestly, I think that the RIAA would try to put a some spin on it (like that you're not allowed to use backups from another person's license or some shit). I don't think this would stop them.
Anyways, to answer the rest of your question: I'd guess you'd need the reciept; how else are they to know that you're the one who bought the cassette or that you didn't buy it after you were charged?
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
"Proof" for whom? For the RIAA, I strongly suspect that there is no possible evidence which you could produce which they would deem sufficient.
For a court of law? I don't think that it's ever gotten that far in court yet.
Even a copyright registration in your name is not conclusive proof of ownership, as George Harrison found out the hard way. Bright Tunes Music successfully sued Harrison and his publisher for subconsciously copying "He's So Fine" by Ronald Mack into "My Sweet Lord". Google1 | Google2 | Inevitability
The way the RIAA and the courts have been going, probably the only way to *PROVE* you own some music is to win a court case and have the courts say that you do.
This is why the RIAA isn't invading people's homes and going through their CDs and hard drives. Yet. They'd *like* to say that you are only entitled to one copy of each work you purchase, and if it's destroyed you'd need to buy another copy. But they're already raising tons of consumer discontent and if they push it much farther they risk a huge backlash.
The question is flawed. The music companies aren't suing anyone for possession. They are suing them for providing copies to others.
It's legal in the US to record music from the radio, to rip it from your CDs, to record it on a cassette tape from another cassette tape or CD or LP, to download it from the Internet (but not to upload it, and of course P2P filesharing technology makes everyone a redistributor), to stick a microphone out your window and record it from your neighbours stereo...
So, given that, the burden of proof is on the RIAA. And they know it, why do you think they go to such efforts to catch people actually using P2P software to get their music fix?
Let's face it, folks. The RIAA has an agenda, and it's fairly transparent. They want, eventually, for you to pay some amount every time you access media. That's the only way they can assure their revenue stream into the digital age. Well, that and producing new talent, but they'r enot exactly great at taht, are they?
Thinking outside my Head
First Response:
Criminal court? He doesn't have to prove shit, innocent until proven guilty, right?
Civil court? The accuser still needs a preponderance of evidence. Just about anything from physical media, to a receipt, to testimony by a friend that he saw the guy make the purchase ought to be enough reduce the accuser to less than a preponderance.
Second Response:
If this is about one of the MAFIAA's "sue 'em all and let God sort it out" lawsuits then chances are it doesn't matter if he has legal ownership or not. Those suits are about distribution and not simply possesion of a copy.
No way I'm going to double-check and go dig through USC Title 17 on a Friday night while under the influence of tequila, but I don't think it's illegal to receive an unauthorized copy, just to make the copy or to distribute the copy. Feel free to dig through the spaghetti code on the other end of that link to find something that says otherwise.
PS, all typos and poor logic are the sole property of Padron's Resposada.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sure you are making an observation, but what could happen over an argument like this is astounding. If you'd like, I'm sure the record store in conjunction with the recording label would be more than happy to keep a database of all your purchases. Of course, on this database, would be your personal information. Purchases, phone number, residence, number of people in your household, what your interests are, email addresses so on and so forth. They are making enough excuses without our helping. If I purchase it, and tell them its mine, they will back off. Or pay the consequences.
Agreed. It's really an odd question. It's really not that hard to stay on the right side of the law.* It's when people try to be devious that all the problems start.
*The main thrust is easy to understand for legalese. It's the gray areas, and corner cases you may need a lawyer to explain.
(I am not a lawyer, etc.) There's no express right to make a backup of an audio recording, but leaving that aside, what's the point of a backup except to prolong access to the recording beyond the life of the original media? From the legal perspective, it's silly to even make a backup if one loses the right to use it in the event the original media is destroyed.
Now, the question of theft of the original media is slightly more interesting. A thief obtains no legal title to stolen goods, so if ones original media were stolen, one might retain constructive possession of the originals. That constructive possession would, if we assume the backups were themselves legal, permit the continued use of the backup media.
I wonder whether there's any precedent as to what would happen if the originals were later destroyed by the thief - would the use right terminate? If we assume that destruction of the originals in a house fire would terminate the right to use the backups, then I imagine no use right would be retained if the would-be thief hadn't stolen them but destroyed them and left the pieces in the possession of the owner. Wacky.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Absolutely nothing will be good enough for them. Sure, you might have dated recepts for *every* CD. You might have recorded in a dated book with numbered pages each and every CD you ripped, what program, version & settings you used. You might have logs, affadavits, and everything else but really, when you get right down to it...
You're not a customer to them, you're a pirate. You're not entitled to make any use of the music other than listening to it by yourself or with immediate family and up to three (3) friends (any more than that and they'll probably consider it a "public performance," which you need to compensate them for).
Personally? I don't give a crap. I don't intend to let them find me or sue me, I don't intend to buy their crap, and whatever things I already have, I'll make any damn use of that I want to. And if they don't like that? That's just too damn bad.
(Mass of Lawyer) x (Mass of Lawyer's Paralegal Team) x (Mass of Lawyer's Bill) x (Mass of Lawyer's Favourite Pick-Axe) / (Witnesses Brains Eaten) = (Righteousness of Lawyer's Case)
Whoever has the greatest righteousness owns the music. This is true even when there IS no music. A guy got sued in England for copying silence - and lost. On the other hand, there have been lawsuits over sampled music used by scratch and rap artists for years, and the copiers usually win. Issues such as interpretation, fair use, etc, have not made the situation clearer. Rather, they have become so stuffed with subclauses, exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions that it is impossible to be sure of anything.
(Some ancient Greek music has yet to be deciphered - nobody is quite sure of the notation of the really early stuff. They are also very clearly out of copyright. But I'll bet you anything you like that if any of the pieces is ever solved and is any good by modern standards, music execs will try to claim ownership somehow.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The law doesn't say what constitutes proof of ownership, that's what the jury is for, so a good lawyer is probably going to get you a lot further than any object or piece of paper you can produce.
I believe the proper response for this is "mu".
Your question presupposes that there is a need for individuals to prove that they purchaced some music. I say that there is not. Should a group of the RIAA ilk take consumers to court for owning supposedly pirated music, then the RIAA or the group like them will need to prove to the court that the music is indeed illegitimate; "beyond a reasonable doubt" for criminal cases, and they must have sufficient evidence for strong suspicion for civil damages (IANAL, so I don't know all the legalese speak for the necessary evidence in a civil case).
Where they get you, however, is when you distribute said music. Getting everyone at work to upload all the music they own to the jukebox server, is what RIAA et. al. defines as "stealing". Most people here think this is a good idea, but it does violate copyright laws (since you're basically making a local copy each time you listen to a song on the server), and is not covered by Fair Use.
If you have digitized music, copyright laws and DMCA have little chance of harming you in court, because the onus is on the litigant to prove that you violated these laws. If there is any way that you could have happened upon DRM-free copies of the music, any lawyer worth the $100 you pay for an hour in court will get the case promptly thrown out, and most likely will get the prosecuting party to pay the bill for wasting everyone's time.
The whole point of the RIAA's lawsuits is to instill fear, so the likelihood of actually going to court to defend yourself is practically nil.
The first thing they do is offer to settle for some "low, low" rediculously inflated fee. If you actually _do_ pony up the legal fees to defend yourself, chances are they will drop the case and concentrate on their less financially motivated defendants.
You will never have to prove you bought music, simply because they will only call your bluff and take you to court if they can thoroughly ruin you financially and make an example out of you.
Whether you actually _bought_ the music is of absolutely no consequence to them (ask any 9 year old girl, grandmother or dead man ever sued by the RIAA).
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
2) however, if you want to look at another industry that has had similar problems, look at the BSA, The Business Software Alliance. I'm not sure where they get the authority, but they do occasionally do raids on business and require that the business prove that it has legal licenses for all the software they use.
From what I've heard, in many cases even having the original media and license sticker things has not been deemed to be sufficient proof of ownership, and businesses have been forced to purchase additional licenses even though they had a seperate copy of the software for each computer it was installed on. However, I'm not certain of the details here, so I could be wrong.
Can children inherit their parents video/audio recordings?
How are they to proof that the recordings are legit?
How about resale (second hand book or record stores)?
It would help if copyright would end after some years but somehow they keep extending it.
Also think of how iTMS is handeling resale, inheriting, divorce, etc... any event where ownership needs to be transfered...
What we have here is a conflict in the definition of property.
Without the right and ability to resale (transfer of ownership) you don't have any property.
Without property rights you can not have an open and free market.
Without an open and free market you can not have fair prices or honest competition.
Is a book property? A CD? A DVD? A iTMS movie?
What I cannot create, I do not understand
What happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Why do -I- have to prove the mp3 in my mp3 player is legal? Why can't my word suffice? Shouldn't RIAA have to prove I obtained it illegally?
They say I got it from p2p. I say I ripped it off a legal CD I misplaced later. Until they -prove- I actually downloaded it from p2p I should be innocent, shouldn't I?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You own the music like you own a book. It's only since companies like Microsoft have started asserting that you paid $XXX for nothing other than the right to click on a 'Yeah, I sell you my soul' button and it's only the clicking of the button (and subsequent agreement) that gives you any right to the software on the CD that you ostensibly paid for ... (god what a run-on sentence) that people have been able to swallow the idea that they don't really own the music that they 'buy' at the store.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I'll quit repeating it as soon as somebody shows me how to prevent myself from making the same mistake that Harrison made.
So how do I recognize whether a song that I have written contains such a subconscious plagiarism before I go and publish it?
It's only since companies like Microsoft have started asserting that you paid $XXX for nothing other than the right to click on a 'Yeah, I sell you my soul' button . . .
I've posted about; and gotten shit over it, that issue before. I remember the world before that happened. I remember the first "Save Mickey Bill" as well.
However, even before we "saved" Mickey you owned a book, but you did you not own the book's text. That is specifically what is protected by copyright.
Books and CDs are property. You buy it; you own it. "Content" has certain rights associated with it. Do not license rights. Buy property. Used property is cheaper and doesn't support the RIAA, although you run the risk of being considered a pirate statistically.
KFG
Rip your cd's to ogg. While that doesn't guarantee that you haven't violated copyright, it's unlikely that a large collection of music files in a minority format were all acquired through file sharing.
Loose lips lose spit.
You'd never be brought to court for illegally possessing music, you'd be brought to court for illegally distributing music. And it's quite easy for them to show that you don't have a copyright, as typically only a limited number of these exist for any given song.
When jackbooted thugs start yanking the iPods of folks walking down the street and demanding to know where the listener obtained the song, then we'll have this problem. Until then, you're only sued for unlawful distribution.
Even better, the sale only "counts" as legit if you paid a reasonable price for it in case of you buying it from a thief. This could be intresting in the case of allofmp3.com. It means if I buy a 100 euro item for 10 and somebody else then claims it was stolen from them my receipt don't matter shit. I loose the item because I had no reasonable expectation the sale was legit. It could in theory be used to sue allofmp3 buyers who could have known that the sale was too good to be true. In this case your receipt could even be the proof of your crime.
In practice unless malice is very clear the police just take away the item in question and do not charge for being involved in fencing.
But anyway this is pure speculation by a non-lawyer.
But yes it is a very real problem yet it nothing new. Consider how do you proof the loss of possesion. Say in case of theft or a fire. "Yes your honor, that empty spot on the wall used to be where my undiscovered Rembrandt used to hang. Please tell the insurance company to cough up the millions, in small bills please."
In a fire how do you proof that the charred remains of your CD-collection are in fact all rare special editions and not jumble sales 5 for a dollar from your local supermarket grab bin? Keep receipts and keep photographic evidence. The police love it if in case of a theft you can hand over a stack off photographs off your possesions. It makes their work so much easier. Not the capturing of criminals but the damned sorting out who the fuck all the stolen stuff belonged too. Dutch police recently had a funny case because of it. Couple of kids stole peoples door mats. Harmless enough except that they were caught and the doormats confiscated to be returned to their rightfull owners according to the law. Except offcourse nobody is going to bother about a doormat so the police is now stuck with them for the legal term they got to keep such items. So please won't you come by and pick up a doormat. PLEASE! Evidence? Just point to the one you like.
All theory aside yes it is a real problem of how to proof that you own what you own. You should always keep receipts and in case of gifts note who they are from so you can get the receipt from them. Nobody is going to do that and in daily live we just deal with this and accept "normal" claims as most likely to be true. So that break in could loose you a TV and a VCR and a gaming console but NOT a TV and a Plasma and a project and a VCR and a DVR and every gaming console ever launched unless you hand over some proof.
But does the music industry even care about proof? Since they seem to be against media-shifting (copying music from CD to MP3 for example) in general and have a weird view on ownership anyway I am not sure a receipt of you having owned the LP is enough to defend you against downloading the MP3 version of the LP from somebody else. More important it is no defence for the person who is uploading that music to you (for now most of the cases are against uploaders, not downloaders).
For now all you got to hope is that things like RIAA lawsuits happen to other people. Most stuff does. Don't worry be happy and try not to think that to other people, you are other people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let's assume some random person is hauled into court allegedly for having music that he has not legitimately bought.
The only scenario where that might happen is if you're caught shoplifting.
The RIAA has never brought suit against someone in the terms that you describe. They've brought suit against people for distributing music, not posession. In which case, your proof would be a contract/license of some sort that gives you the right to distribute the music.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
In the case of fire or theft, hopefully you had insurance, so you will get replacements anyway. Of course, the insurance company will probably want proof as well.
A friend of mine was in that position recently. They managed to find a recent photograph of their living room, clearly showing their CD collection sitting in some stand alone CD racks. That was enough to keep the insurance company happy.
You own the book, you own the text. What you don't own is the right to distribute copies of the text you own.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
What you don't own is the right to distribute copies of the text you own.
Because you do not own the text. That is why you have to pay royalties to stage a play.
KFG
One of the primary arguments that the RIAA has floated is that they're actually only selling you a license for the music.
Nothing stating that the license is via CD-playback. They've suggested in the past that ripping your CD to your iPod is not legal, which is pretty implausible - I doubt that anyone doesn't rip CDs, once they have an iPod. (I know one out of X, where X is a large number.)
In my mind, if they're just selling a license to play the music you bought, then it should be legal to play it for yourself on that license. Wherever it is...you're licensed to listening to only one of those copies at a time. You can't listen it to the same time that your SO listens to it at a seperate location. It's impossible to enforce, so I'm sure they want stronger DRM to push it on people...except that DRM violates the agreement on what a CD is.
IANAL.
What you don't own is the copyright. Copyright is not the text itself. It is a right with respect to the text.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Copyright is not the text itself. It is a right with respect to the text.
Copyright is a right; an abstract concept, to a monopoly on the text; another abstract concept.
Which is why I may owe a royalty for speaking it. Speech is an instance of the text.
KFG
Whilst at this current time in the evolution of human society, the greed of the minority has abridged the rights of the majority, the assupmtion that this will be true for all time is patently false.
It is expected that human society will continue to evolve and petty greed will not continue to be the sole motivator for the creation of new ideas, open source software being a case in point (GPL only being a neccesity to fend off the greedy).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Not to get to picky but lets try to to keep sticking the word legal in front of right. I have the right to copy anything I so choose at any time. . .
.petty greed will not continue to be the sole motivator for the creation of new ideas. . .
I have elsewhere/when avered that I accept Jefferson's assertion that copyright has no place in American Constitutional government. Monroe's arguments also have some merit; and of course prevailed, but his defense of his arguements (that The People would not allow unjust expansion of artificial monopolies) have proven falacious.
. .
However, I have no idea where you get the idea that this is the case. Most of the "creative types" I know never expect to make a dime from their creations. Creation is its own motivation and reward. Don't confuse the trees with the forest.
KFG
It's an interesting question. What it boils down to is the outcome if it came to legal proceedings.
If we're dealing with copyright infringement as a civil matter, then it comes down to the balance of probablilty. In a court, if there is a record of a house fire, you are probably ok to a collection of MP3s. If there's no record of a fire, and you can't produce a few hundred origial CDs, you're probably in trouble.
However, the industry seems to be treating piracy as a criminal matter, e.g. "piracy is a crime!". This allows stronger scare tactics. The flip side of that coin is that it has to be proven beyond all reasoable doubt that you did in fact illegaly obtain the music. So, if there's any chance at all, based upon the evidence, that you may have backed up your own music and then lost the originals, you have to be assumed innnocent.
But that point is moot, since it just came up now.
Even then, you could own a copy and just not be bothered to rip it yourself (say you needed to pay for software), so you downloaded it instead. Or you forgot your CD at work and really wanted to hear a certain song. Etc.
Twinstiq, game news
"That is why you have to pay royalties to stage a play."
Not when the copyright expires. And since there is no transfer of property going on at the expiration point, it becomes obvious that the owner of the particular book also owns the contents of the particular book, and is merely restricted in his property rights during the lifetime of the copyright.
Duh. :-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
That's a ridiculous scenario and won't happen.
You don't get in trouble for having stuff that you're not supposed to have. You get in trouble for copying stuff in ways that are not permitted under Fair Use.
And the getting-in-trouble-for-copying can happen whether or not you already legally have the stuff. Don't ever forget the my.mp3.com case, where mp3.com was transmitting music (from CDs they legally owned) to users who had proven that they also legally owned the CDs. The copying was still judged to be copyright infringement.
Don't worry about your disks getting you in trouble; worry about your network connections getting you in trouble.
As for how you prove you didn't infringe copyright, you can't. It's an action, not a state-of-being, so it's all about witnesses. A PI for RIAA says "I ran a bittorrent client and an address that your ISP says was assigned to you, sent some pieces of Metallica's song to me" and you say "No, that didn't happen," and the judge decides who is more convincing.
Once you understand this (having vs copying) then the backup scenario is pretty straight-forward. When you made a backup, that was fair use. Fair Use is your defense. Then there's a disaster and your originals burn. Your backups don't somehow retroactively become "illegal." They were legally made.
Things get a little weirder for software (not music) in situations where large companies have purchased licenses rather than copies, which is why you sometimes hear about BSA audits. In those kind of situations, your proof will be paperwork.
Stemming from the license scenario, many gullible stooges these days think authorized copies of things protected by IP laws, have never been sold and instead that they are always licensed. (They think this even in situations where the customers didn't know (?!) they were licensing.) They're wrong, of course, but if you want to appease these people, then you better keep the paperwork for everything you buy. I hope you still have the receipt for your "Led Zeppelin II" vinyl album and your "Catch 22" paperback.
If you ever do decide to license something (instead of buying a copy), then all the rules change. Copyright law won't tell you much. The contract will say what is allowed, and it will probably regulate copying, usage, and possession (and maybe other things as well). Be sure to read it carefully, before you sign it and allow them keep it on file, and of course keep a copy of the contract for yourself, too.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Not necessarily. First off, the BSA is a private entity and has no more jurisdition over you than I do (at least until my plan for world domination gets a little further along ;)). If they show up and "offer" to perform an audit, you are well within your rights to call security or the police to escort them out. You are also well within your rights to prosecute them for tresspassing if they come back. THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER ANYTHING UNLESS YOU GIVE IT TO THEM.
Here's how my experience with the BSA worked:
BSA: Hi! We're here to help you perform a compliance audit on your software licensing.
Me (knowing full well this is a trick on their part): Get out of my building, off our property, and don't ever come back.
BSA: Why are you being hostile?
Me (dialing 911): Yes, I have some trespassers here. Can you come get them please?
911: We're sending officers now.,
Me (hanging up): I know how you people work. You come in here for your friendly little audit and then you magically seem to find all kinds of issues. Then you negotiate a "settlement" with the software makers at 1.5X the full retail price. It's blackmail and I don't like it. That means I don't like you, either. Now, I've called the police and they'll be here in a few minutes. You can leave now, or leave when they get here.
BSA: But we don't understand why you won't let us do an audit? What are you afraid of?
Me: I'm not afraid, but I don't take lightly to thugs showing up unannounced in my shop and disrupting my employees either. Blackmail is usually a mafia tactic. Do they know what you guys are up to?
BSA (to policeman): Hey! You can't thow us out. We have a right to be here.
Policeman: Sorry, but this is private property. You've been asked to leave. Now I'm telling you to leave. If you come back, and we get another phone call, we will arrest you and you will go to jail.
BSA (on the way out the door): You'll be hearing from us.
What ensued then was a series of nasty, threatening letters which I forwarded to our legal department, who got a good laugh out of them, before sending them off the state AG. The letters tried to imply that they are some sort of legal "software police" (as in an actual law enforcement entitity). That was the last we ever heard of the BSA.
HDGary secures my bank
Wouldn't it be then illegal to read a book to your kid?
And, if you're listening to a CD, wouldn't it be illegal to let any friends hear the music?
Or, supposing those things are considered fair use... what about a teacher reading a book to her class of kindergarteners? Or, what about listening to your car stereo with the windows down?
Everyone that has been sued for copyright volitions has been sued for distribution, not for possession. There has been no case of anyone being sued because they downloaded music, only cases where they were sharing music. The very reason why this is done is because of this grey area of 'proof' of ownership. I am not saying that this is good or bad, just that it is a moot legal point because no one is sued for possession of material, only distribution.
"Plenty of knowledgable people, including myself, will argue that it shouldn't be illegal, but everyone will accept that it is at least prima facie illegal."
Well the problem isn't so much "illegal" as "unenforcable". However the nature of P2P makes one an uploader AND a downloader. So making the later legal wouldn't help. I would also point out that if one eliminates uploading? The fact that downloading is legal would be a moot point.
Just to clear up things on this thread: this has nothing to do with RIAA suits per se, other than they put the idea of litigation into people's minds.
I have wondered about this mainly because (1) I got rid of a lot of cassettes, where I bought CDs in some cases and digitized songs in others and (2) I have a lot of out-of-print CDs and rare CDs that have been difficult to collect, and I have made backup copies of these (I keep a set at work, etc).
The lawsuits are about dissimination, not possession, but I have wondered for years what would be acceptable proof of actual purchase, i.e. not "stealing" music, if someone had to do that, for example, if asked: "you have 9GB of MP3s on your hard disk, where did they come from?"
I guess this is the next best thing to having to prove you exist, or aren't crazy. Even if you could prove it, would anyone believe you?
"You own the music like you own a book." But it's much more difficult to make backup copies of a book...! Making a CD backup is effortless. Books usually cost more to back up than to make another copy, so you'd only do it with an out-of-print or rare book. Because books are harder to back up, the question would probably never arise - I would never have a set of backup books stashed in a drawer at my office.
Transfer this theory to RL theft.
Stop reading dirk's message after this point. Arguments about copyright based on physical objects, trespassing, adverse posession, or other scenarios that involve an act that deprives the victim of the use of the object, land, and so on... these arguments are all invalid, irrelevant, pointless, and simply nonsensical.
You'd be better off arguing that someone had stolen something from you by taking a photograph of your house and garden.
Of course backups are legal if you lose the original. That's the purpose of a backup isn't it?
Of course there will be no proof of purchase (assuming your receipts weren't also backed-up off-site). But in theory, the legal system of the US, UK, Canada, whereever places the burdon of proof on the accuser.
Ya heard it. Let's boycott ALL the commercial media, programs, videos, moooosick, and all the dross they try to foist on us. Lets even just do it for a couple of months. These are businesses grown fat by taking advantage of us. They certainly do not listen to us through their ears. Lets see if they listen through their asses?! Kick them hard in the balls..I mean wallet..same thing to a hollywoood viagra fed power drunk pedophile executive. A real campaign would be to boycott them until they get rid of the whole 'licensing' and 'limited warrantee' scam. Let's see! It was a certain faded blonde-in-a-bottle brunette from a stinky area of Michigan and a conveniently forgotten Italian name that is involved in this as well. Can ya really not do without another cross up record/CD/MaggotPutrescence3 (MP3) from this one. I mean look at it another way. This industry has'nt sold a quality product since they found out they can sue 12 year old schoolgirls and 90 year old grandmothers of their last cent. They want your money for nothing, and they have found out that under the DMCA and related laws passed by fools like Al Gore and others, they can legally do this...if we let them. We have let them for far too long.
Alons Enfant de la Patria...La Jour del Gloire Est Arrive!..
Does the loss of the original property invalidate the legality of the backups?
This one is simple to answer: Of course not! However, when challenged in court, it might be difficult to prove.
This issue starts with: "What do you actually BUY when you pay for a CD in a shop?".
You surely buy a round item, a plastic case, and some paper.
You also get the right to put the round item into an electronic device, which can play the sounds encoded on said round item. This however, is a limited right: The copyright owner seems to have the right to tell you that this can't be a public performance of his/her work.
The copyright owners would probably very much like to tell you: NO, you're not allowed to make backups of my copyrighted work.
However, it seems that courts have ruled "fair use" of copyrigthed work, and that this allows making backups.
It would be useful, if someone would write down what rights I actually buy when I buy a licence to use the copyrighted work on a CD.
I've answered more fully elsewhere in the thread, but wanted to add a more direct response to the posed question here. It is my belief that while, in the case of a car, you can produce the car title with your name on it as an appropriate proxy (for the car itself in the event of 100% loss/theft/vaporization), there does not exist a similar structure in buying music. Hence, the appropriate answer (that will nonetheless cost a ton of time and court fees) for a consumer would seem to be along the lines of, "Sure I own these songs. If you'd like to come after me and convince a judge that I do not own these songs (under a requirement of demonstrating preponderance of evidence to the court), then you are welcome to do so." Bonus points for bringing photos that show, for instance, a CD collection in the shot.
Without the provision for documents of ownership (e.g. licenses) for music files, then it really seems to come down to who has the deeper pockets (**AA), more numerous lawyers (**AA), and can point to a track record of legal pursuit (**AA). The short answer here, though, is that it would appear you have no direct mechanism by which to prove purchase and ownership of songs, only indirect measures of sales slips and possibly mangled physical CD/tape/vinyl cases.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've read Title 9. (US Copyright law.) Really, when it comes to recordings, the only thing that can be owned is the right to copy or a "phonorecord". Essentially, a CD is considered, by law, a "phonorecord". If you physically own a "phonorecord", you the law allows you to lend and sell the physical "phonorecord". You may also make copies that can only be used by you. If you sell the "phonorecord", you must destroy all copies.
As far as I know, you only violate US Copyright law when you make a copy of a recording that you do not have a right to copy. For example, if you own a pirated recording, you are not at fault, but the person who did the pirating is. If you owned a CD ("phonorecord"), made a copy, and then lost the original in a fire, you would not be liable for copyright violation unless the copyright owner can prove that you sold the original. (Or, to put it in a different context: If you have a binder full of CDRs that are copies of commercial CDs, the only way that you can be liable is if all of the copyright owners can prove that you copied CDs that you don't own. This is difficult, because you can claim that you found them on a mountaintop, downloaded them, gifts, ect.)
No, I will not work for your startup
Half my music (everything pre-iTunes) is ripped from Audio CDs that I threw away the day after I bought them, because I had the digital copies, and the other half I bought through iTunes Music Store, but have taken off the Digital Rights Management, making them normal AAC files. Assuming the iTunes Music Store servers, Gmail's servers, and all my local copies of email reciepts spontaneously combusted in unison and I was left with only my 1500 unlocked music files, I'd look hell of suspicious, but no one could do a single thing. People are innocent until proven guilty. That's why the millions of people who illegally downloaded stuff on Napster weren't each thrown in jail. No one could definitively prove all those people guilty. The law is really on the side of the buyers, not the RIAA IMHO.